Afield: Portraits of Wisconsin Naturalists, Empowering Leopold's Legacy

writings

Preface:

To Catch a Naturalist

Open to those who are feelingly alive to the majesty of nature.

—Alexander von Humboldt, 1822

There is a great need to preserve what is left of our fragile environment before we have passed the point of no return.

—Owen Gromme, letter to SM (January 30, 1989)

A landmark UW intergovernmental analysis … assessed the state of global biodiversity and finds that devastation is proceeding at a rate that is tens to hundreds of times faster than during the past ten million years—a rate never seen before in history.

—Forbes, May 9, 2019

One reason Wisconsin silica sand is so desirable is because it lies very close to the surface, requiring relatively little digging to get at it…. Once the sand is all gone, the plan is to restore the hills; they’ll just be a third smaller than before…. From there, it’s off to the fracking fields. The sand that used to make up a Wisconsin hillside will be shot deep into the earth [to free up oil and gas] hundreds of miles away in Texas or North Dakota.

—Vince Beiser, The World In A Grain, The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization (Riverhead Books, 2018).

Recent generations of children have grown up with even fewer meaningful experiences in the outdoors than those of a century ago, and today’s youth spend far more time indoors or in highly controlled outdoor settings than ever before…. It’s clear that if we are to cultivate knowledge about—and a sense of responsibility for—nature, we need to begin at a very young age [with] old-fashioned nature study as one way to offset nature-deficit disorder.

—Stanley A. Temple, Rachel Carson and a Childhood Sense of Wonder, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters (Fellows Forum, 2015)

A rare wild bison was shot and killed after it wandered into Germany. A local official ordered hunters to kill the animal, which had not been seen there for over 200 years.

—The New York Times, 2017

This book is a beginning—40 years in the making—with no definitive ending to telling the stories of our naturalists. This is, after all, Volume One. I hope these stories inspire you to become more engaged within the natural world, more aware of and sensitive to the wild and untamed and inviolate, as have our Wisconsin naturalists—those men and women who, often alone, study or observe some aspect of nature rigorously or to different degrees—by consistently immersing themselves afield, and then sharing their ardent knowledge and insights through various means, from correspondence, journal entries, and artistic expression, to published papers, books, lectures, and classes, to field trips and family outings.

Whether the focus is on birds, fishes, herptiles, insects, mammals, plants, rocks, soils, or some other area of outdoor interest, this book will attempt to bring to life the journeys and personal challenges of our naturalists.

I will go further. Naturalists are often public interpreters of landscapes, of plant and animal communities, of interrelationships between plants and animals. This is what separates them from other scientific minds—or scientists that may lead a less public life by nature of their chosen area of study. My friend and naturalist Bill Volkert (see Chapter Eleven) put it this way:

I see my job as an interpretive naturalist as somewhat different; there are many excellent scientists—including field scientists—but they’re not all capable of effectively conveying what they know to a broad audience. I’m familiar with a wide range of studies in nature; that’s why I take the title of naturalist. I’m not a specialist in one particular field, although I have studied birds more than anything else. But I try to be familiar with a variety of topics. Good communication skills are essential. It’s one thing to know your subject; it’s another to get other people to see it and understand it.

DURING THE COURSE of a life negotiating peaks and canyons, while stubbornly (some might say blindly) adhering to a vision of what can be accomplished via dogged perseverance and sometimes not-always-quiet tenacity, and not succumbing to the desire to give up, I have had the good fortune to engage and learn from many a fine Wisconsin naturalist. Wide-ranging discussions often occurred, typically at day’s end.

For this project, I spoke with more than 40 Wisconsin naturalists, most of whom I interviewed with a portable Marantz tape recorder, starting in 1979 with Sigurd Olson at his cabin on Listening Point near Ely, Minnesota.

For the few naturalists in this book I did not know well or never met, family members and colleagues shared journals or directed me to the Wisconsin State Historical Society to personal correspondence illuminating the breadth of the naturalist’s life. But through it all, during the long journey to bring this volume to completion, I have been more intrigued by what the naturalist experienced or felt or believed than what he or she accomplished because in exploring any life a fuller portrait emerges.

As far as how I selected those featured in this first volume, I thought about how different personalities and life stories would fit together under the same literary roof, so to speak. What you have before you is a purposeful selection—elaborated further below—of this first collection of Wisconsin naturalists. Someone else may have selected a different array of personality types. In Volume One, 18 chapters feature 19 naturalists. Nine of these naturalists were inducted into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame (www.wchf.org). I knew personally eight of the nine and wasn’t alive to know the ninth, Increase Lapham.

The Wisconsin naturalists represented here are well known to some, barely known, or not known at all, but, again, I have been more interested in life stories and experiences than in notable accomplishments. How to begin? Who goes first and who last? This volume has to begin with Increase Lapham, the pioneering, self-taught naturalist (and arguably our first well-known ecologist of sorts) who came to Wisconsin before it was a state, and who settled in Milwaukee before it was a city. The near-bookend has to be Eric Epstein, the highly regarded, longtime ecologist for the Wisconsin DNR’s Bureau of Endangered Resources—now the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation—who retired in 2011 with an understanding of Wisconsin landscapes that few have attained. And in between I will introduce you to extraordinary men and women whose lives are as varied as the subjects that interest them.

Francis Zirrer follows Lapham as the next earliest-appearing naturalist chronologically among those covered in this volume. George Knudsen and Jim Zimmerman follow next, and are paired because they were only two years apart in age (born in the mid-1920s) and often ran into each other early on. Ruth Hine, the Hamerstroms, and Sam Robbins follow because of their friendships and work during the same time period in the middle to later years of the twentieth century. Lorrie Otto follows George Becker because, like Becker (devoted to fishes), she became focused on a singular pursuit: transforming our front lawns into showcases of native plants. Francis Hole is next as the chief spokesperson for our soils. Bill Volkert, LeRoy Lintereur, Lois Nestel, and Marion Moran follow because they are largely self-taught, though each had varying degrees of education, ranging from no college (Nestel), to some college (Volkert and Moran), to a college degree (Lintereur).

Joseph Rose follows Marion Moran because of his indigenous heritage and perspective, a perspective that Marion revered. Michael Van Stappen precedes Eric Epstein because he was at life’s end during the time of our interview—a unique circumstance—and because he was a friend of Eric’s. The last chapter focuses on Sigurd Olson because of his importance to other naturalists portrayed here, and because his wise outlook and indefatigable spirit provide a fitting anchor to the book.

Most chapters of Volume One begin with a brief biographical sketch followed by the words only of the naturalist I interviewed. I employed this approach to allow the reader to connect immediately with a naturalist. A few chapters contain narratives and selected excerpts from journals or letters. My guiding intention throughout is to honor Leopold’s legacy as demonstrated through the journeys and stories of our past and present naturalists, who tirelessly remind us to not lose sight of ecological and human-land relationships.

You will notice men* are featured more than women in this volume. Why? When I began my chosen profession as a conservation biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in the early 1980s, there were far fewer women than men in the wildlife and natural history fields, to say nothing about what wildlife-based professions were like prior to the 1950s (as Fran Hamerstrom could attest). Accordingly, my early field experiences (and later conversations) involved a far greater number of men than women, particularly those individuals older than me. Thankfully, today, the number of women in the wildlife field, and in the sciences in general, has increased dramatically.

*Each a white Caucasian male (except for Joe Rose). We need more people of color in the field to represent the diversity of our culture, and to bring unique perspectives on the natural world.

The true value of the Midland lifestyle is that it simultaneously builds and strengthens three levels of existence—individual, community, and Earth. In building character, [founder] Paul Squibb knew it was necessary to avoid the clutter that came as a burden of living in prosperity…. To Squibb, a life of character was an intentional, measured, uncluttered life—a life free from the keeping-up-appearances mentality that burdens us with conspicuous consumption and distracts us towards minutiae…. The means by which Squibb sought to build character in his simple life school almost a century ago are the same ones now advocated by modern-day visionaries for healing our planet from the affliction of affluenza and climate collapse…. Uncluttered lives leave smaller ecological footprints.

—Lise Schickel Goddard. MIDLAND ~ From Strong Roots Grows a Mighty Oak: The Enduring Educational Model of Midland School, 2016.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE LIVED in Wisconsin all of my adult life (since 1972), the idea for something akin to this book originated when I was a high school student at Midland School near Los Olivos, California. Before arriving at Midland, I had lost interest in school in Washington D.C., where my father worked for the State Department. I remember only being happy when alone by a stream or pool looking for frogs and turtles or exploring fields looking for bugs and butterflies or walking in a woods listening to birds—wherever I could find a piece of the natural world in a very urban setting. My parents were worried.

Born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, they both had a love for remote places and had a primitive cabin on Lake Namakagon in northern Wisconsin. It was here where we were the last to go electric on the lake—preferring to use kerosene lamps—that I grew up during the summers and where I first acquired a passion for birding, awaking during early morns on a screened porch to the calls of an eastern wood-pewee or red-eyed vireo, or listening at night to a distant common loon as a stormfront approached.

My older sister, Adelaide Donnelley, who lives in California, suggested to my parents that Midland School was just the place where I could regain my footing. Midland lay at the knee of the foothills right next to the Los Padres National Forest. The founder of Midland—Paul Squibb—leased land beginning in 1932 during the Great Depression and eventually purchased what amounted to 2,860 acres for the school, which emphasized Spartan values to develop a student’s character. We lived in small wooden cabins heated by tiny wood stoves that we collected firewood for during school outings in the surrounding foothills. At Midland, traditional academics were combined with hard physical work and afforded endless opportunities to explore the natural world.

At night, occasionally, I remember sneaking away with a few upperclassmen to the distant reservoir where we would sit on a hillside—a long grass stem in my mouth—listening to a western screech owl or common poorwill.

What I liked best about Midland (a special school, still about 80 in size, and today coeducational), in addition to its unique teachers and students, was the freedom to wander alone in the nearby hills and mountain range on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday afternoons, when students were free to do whatever they chose. Grass Mountain showed its face every day as an alluring and prominent destination.

On those blessed afternoons off, I often hiked alone as far away as I could, into the chaparral, through sagebrush and oaks, and higher into manzanita, up into cougar and condor range, knowing I needed to be back at school in time for a shower and the school dinner. Oh, and there was the nightly required gathering at the school chapel just before dinner, but I tried to avoid that ritual whenever possible.

During one of these forays, near the summit of Grass Mountain, I remember thinking about naturalist, writer, and explorer John Muir, and what it would have been like to sit with him around a campfire chewing the cud. Here was a man, originally from Scotland, who had spent his boyhood living at a small lake in central Wisconsin, and attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison before leaving for the California wilderness. He famously wrote: I was only leaving one university for another, the Wisconsin University for the university of the Wilderness.¹ I identified with his fierce independence and need to explore the wilderness, and it got me thinking about the different ways early outdoor experiences, or a paucity of them, have influenced our life’s direction. I felt that if I knew more about the inner life of a naturalist such as Muir—what he thought, imagined, suffered through, found joy in—I would understand myself better and find a commonality and purpose in carving a life’s direction.

Fast forward to today. What a great pleasure and high reward it has been to have walked—literally and metaphorically—with the naturalists in the pages before you, or to have gleaned insights from their letters and personal journals. I discovered I shared many of the same general attributes that define this set of naturalists: perseverance, need for solitude, love of wild and remote places, need to master one or more natural history subjects (for me, birds), a sometimes quirky but essential sense of humor to survive failures and disappointments, and a desire to share what has been learned through nature study and outdoor experiences.

So, I’ve been asked many a time, why did I write this book? Other than my intent to introduce to the public the stories and lives of Wisconsin naturalists past and present, what is the greater motivation? The answer is simple and basic: I want others to meet—and learn from—those committed to awakening the wonder, awe, joy, and insight that nature offers through observation, contemplation, and study.

If there are three takeaway themes from the book (and really from the years conversing with all naturalists involved in the Wisconsin Naturalists Project), I would venture to say 1) early exposure/interactions with the outdoors were pivotal to influencing a naturalist’s path; 2) a guiding influence or mentor, and/or literature read early on, were important to encouraging or fostering a career (or an avocation) as a naturalist; and 3) each possessed an unquenchable curiosity for, and a desire to know more about, Wisconsin’s natural history.

There is a danger of becoming too mechanistic, too technological, in our approach to human-land relations. That is why the role of the naturalist is so important: because he or she is in the unique position of not only providing knowledge but guidance in the continuing effort to broaden our creative relations with the land, thereby elevating the importance of conservation in our lives.

A quarter century before Leopold wrote The Land Ethic in A Sand County Almanac, he wrote what historian Susan L. Flader called his most significant … of his unpublished manuscripts² on conservation ethics: Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest, published 30 years posthumously.³ Toward the end of the article Leopold departs from a discussion of erosion and focuses on conservation as a moral issue.

Paraphrasing the Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky, Leopold writes that we try to regard the earth’s parts—soil, mountains, rivers, atmosphere, etc.—as organs, as parts of organs, or a coordinated whole, each part with a definite function…. In such a case we would have all the visible attributes of a living thing, which we do not now realize to be such because it is too big, and its life processes too slow. And there would also follow that invisible attribute—a soul or consciousness—which not only Ouspensky, but many philosophers of all ages, ascribe to all living things and aggregations thereof, including the ‘dead’ earth.

Here, in these early words, you have a hint of the philosophical underpinnings that shaped Leopold’s Land Ethic: A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.⁴ This ethic was an outgrowth of his love for people and the land, and a desire, I believe, to see a new, broader envisioning for how we regard natural resources and the outdoors, which is a central thesis in AFIELD.

Beyond reading this book, I want you to deepen your own special relationship to and with the outdoors. You don’t have to be in a wilderness setting, says Sigurd Olson in the book’s last chapter. You can begin anywhere—in a city park or in any landscape free of pavement. Here’s an example of note:

On August 7, 2018, I visited wolf biologist Adrian Wydeven and wife Sarah Boles, a professional landscaper, who was working late that day. In a forest opening, Sarah had created a remarkable meadow garden of native plants at their home in rural northwestern Wisconsin.

I arrived about 6 p.m., and as I turned up a road close to their home, I observed a merlin (Falco columbarius) darting across the road nearly at eye level. Adrian and I soon sat on a bench and chair at the garden’s edge along the upper part of the meadow community next to a small runoff pond. The pond basin had recently filled with water from rains that had fallen a few days earlier.

Quickly we took note of a large number of dragonflies zipping around us. There were hundreds! These were concentrated at three different locations in the garden. The dragonflies were flying so fast we couldn’t identify them. What were they attracted to? Answer: concentrations of hilltopping black garden ants (Lasius niger) emerging from a grassy mound at each location. Adrian commented that he didn’t see a single flying ant, except one that had landed on my right shoulder but soon disappeared.

We decided to catch one of these dragonflies, but had no net, so Adrian went inside their home and returned with one of Sarah’s shawls—bright orange in color. We stretched it out above the mound, and Adrian flipped it over and caught a dragonfly on our first try. Looking at Karl and Dorothy Legler’s Dragonflies of Wisconsin, we first guessed variable darner (Aeshna interrupta)—a beautiful specimen with turquoise, gem-like markings along its abdomen. The key to darner identification, we later learned, is the shape of the first side-stripe on the thorax because the markings on the abdomen can be similar or appear identical for different darner species. Consulting with naturalist and odonate specialist Bill Smith, we learned its true identity: the Canada darner (Aeshna canadensis), which exhibits a deep cut-out on the thorax’s first side-stripe.

The merlin I had first seen when arriving, I surmised, might have been attracted to the dragonfly concentrations in the garden area, which likely contained more than one species. We walked around Adrian and Sarah’s home in a half-mile radius and found just one other similar gathering of dragonflies and ants but nothing near the numbers observed at the native meadow garden. So, none of this would have happened if we hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, but more importantly, none of what we observed would have taken place if Sarah—over several years—had not diligently created the meadow community of native plants outside their home.

Here was a neat, little ecological demonstration playing out before two enraptured adults (one that specialized in mammals and one in birds) awed like kids in a candy store: the merlin (possibly) attracted to the dragonflies; the dragonflies attracted to and feasting on the ants; and the ants emerging from dry grassy mounds of a small native meadow created by a caring native plant enthusiast. (Parenthetically, the same phenomenon—with merlin nearby—occurred here in 2019 just thirteen days later than the 2018 date—on 20 August, about the same time of day, and only on that day, Adrian told me.) Therefore, dear reader, never underestimate the learning opportunities before you when you allow yourself to be open to the creations and teachings of the natural world.

And further with the aid of a local naturalist, or through one of the hundreds of field trips offered by the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin (www.wisconservation.org), and/or by exploring our State Natural Areas (search keywords wisconsin state natural areas on internet), discover that you can do or see more than what you thought, maybe more than you ever imagined.

I also hope this book will motivate younger generations to place a greater value in knowing and safeguarding our natural resources when they read the stories and come to know the experiences of our naturalists. By having a glimpse into their private worlds and what obstacles stood in their way, I am certain their life stories will become illuminating and instructive.

This book will proudly proclaim that our stories do not end, even when we are no longer around to share them.

Sumner Matteson

Van Vliet Hemlocks State Natural Area, Vilas County, Wisconsin. Old-growth northern mesic forest with small bog lakes, kettle depressions, and black ash swamps. Photo by Thomas A. Meyer, courtesy of Wisconsin DNR.

Prologue:

Revelations

Oh that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in the very prime of the spring … young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!

—John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

What [Alexander von] Humboldt sees from the mountaintop is more than just a view. Every view reveals a history, from the deep time of geology to the shifting migrations of nations to the personality of the viewer, primed by his time to see beauty, meaning, and hope in the landscape, to read beyond the surface to the dynamic play of crosscurrents surging in the depths.

—Laura Dassow Walls, The Passage to Cosmos

This book largely reflects the Western scientific natural history tradition as represented by the naturalists I interviewed during 1979–2017. The one exception is Ojibwe elder Joseph Rose. There is today a growing appreciation of indigenous ecological knowledge, and writers are beginning to take note. ⁵

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was among the first curious Europeans to study nature systematically and earnestly discuss his findings. For nearly 2,000 years his observations of the natural world, particularly his observations of animal behavior, dominated scientific understanding. Especially notable was his knowledge of fish (ichthyology), documented copiously in his Historia Animalium.⁶

A turning point in the understanding of natural history occurred in the seventeenth century when former British clergyman and college teacher John Ray (1627–1705) became the first to classify plants into species and passionately convey his knowledge of natural history to his students.⁷ Following fairly close behind Ray was the unheralded German-born naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), who made a unique and major contribution to entomology and botanical art through her detailed notes and illustrations of the metamorphosis of butterflies, showing the close relationship between plants and butterfly developmental stages, leading some in recent times to call her the world’s first ecologist.⁸ (The word ecology actually did not begin to crop up until 1873; it was first spelled oecology, which came from the Greek word for household, oikos.) She also closely observed the behavior, habitats, and uses of insects in Surinam, and her scientific drawings and sketches of tropical insects and animal life are prized possessions today.

Swedish taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) greatly refined John Ray’s work when he published in 1758 the tenth and definitive edition of Systema Naturae⁹ (the system of nature), which provided the scientific foundation (binomial nomenclature) for the classification of plants and animals. But in the public eye, the individual who first aroused widespread sentiment about natural history study was a contemporary of Linnaeus—the popular Reverend Gilbert White (1720–1793), who spent countless hours in the field and delighted in sharing what he observed with anyone who would listen.

White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, published in 1788, consisted largely of letters describing the natural history around his Selborne vicarage in England’s southern coastal county of Hampshire. Though he lacked formal scientific training, White impressed scientific minds with his fine eye for detail and a superb capability to capture on paper what he observed in the natural world. So keen were White’s observations, and so confident was he, that on at least one occasion he corrected the great Linnaeus who believed a cuckoo to be a bird of prey. White did not personally inform Linnaeus because of modesty, rather White’s brother, John, took it upon himself to write to Linnaeus to advise him of the error.¹⁰

Gilbert White’s love for nature study always gave way, however, to his responsibilities as a clergyman. The lure of the church life almost altered the course of another Englishman—Charles Darwin (1809–1892). Having shown little interest in being a physician, as his father desired, Charles, again at his father’s behest, chose the next best life—that of a priest. He went to Cambridge University for three years, became somewhat disenchanted, but attained a bachelor of arts degree. While there, however, he came under the influence of a geology teacher, Adam Sedgwick, and a professor of botany, the Reverend John Stevens Henslow. It was Henslow who, recognizing Darwin’s greater aptitude for geology and botany and the study of natural history than for ecclesiastical matters, arranged for Darwin’s five-year journey on the HMS Beagle in 1831 to South America and the Canary and Galapagos islands.¹¹

When Darwin returned to England, he detailed his experiences (using Gilbert White as a model) in a book titled Journal of Researches, published in 1839.¹² During his southern voyage, Darwin became quite enamored with the animals he observed, especially when visiting the Galapagos Islands. Information on animal ethology and ecology contributed significantly to his theory of natural selection in On the Origin of Species, published in 1859.¹³

Another very important and highly regarded (but hardly recognized today) naturalist was a friend of Darwin’s, the Prussian explorer and exemplary geographer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), whose popular writings describing his travels and scientific observations in Latin America between 1799 and 1804 influenced not only Darwin, but in the U.S., zoologist and geologist Louis Agassiz, naturalist John Muir, and writer Henry David Thoreau, among several others. Humboldt’s detailed work on the relationship between geography and plant occurrences set the stage for the development of biogeography, and he was the first to articulate the concept of climate change based on his observations.¹⁴ His groundbreaking, multi-volume tome, Kosmos, which portrayed a unified, ecological, interacting universe, anticipated later work by Aldo Leopold, who viewed the earth as a coordinated whole.¹⁵

Still another largely forgotten but highly regarded naturalist of the times was Mary Anning (1799–1847) of southern England. Her love of fossils she discovered initially along England’s southern coast when she was only eleven eventually garnered her much attention in academic circles. A notable find was the discovery of the first Ichthyosaurus, a dolphin-like reptile. Other firsts included the long-necked reptile, Plesiosaurus, and a pterosaur or flying dragon, in the late 1820s. Mary tragically died of breast cancer in her late 40s, but her contributions to our understanding of fossils continue to draw praise.

THE STUDY OF AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY began ambitiously in the late seventeenth century when Jesuit missionary Louis Nicolas (who earlier had joined Father Claude Allouez at Wisconsin’s Chequamegon Bay mission on Lake Superior in 1667) wrote the first comprehensive work on North American birds… [and became] the first writer to attempt to describe all the wildlife of North America.¹⁶ His unpublished work—two manuscripts—vanished for a while after his death, and were not published until the twentieth century.¹⁷

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, Englishman Mark Catesby (1682–1749) published The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands—in parts beginning in 1730 and ending in 1748. This exhaustive work contained 220 colored plates, hand-drawn, of everything from mammals to insects to plants—a comprehensive depiction, including descriptions and observations, of the natural history of Britain’s southeastern colonies.¹⁸

After Catesby came John Bartram (1699–1777), the first American-born and largely self-taught naturalist to achieve international recognition. Bartram (as did Catesby) obtained funds from wealthy gentlemen eager to obtain plants for their gardens, and plants from the British colonies were highly prized. But the long voyages between North America and Britain, combined with rats eating seeds of different varieties, spelled disaster. Bartram changed all of that through ingenious packaging methods (he coated seeds to protect them) involving gourds, bottles, and other containers that effectively protected plants from the stressors of long voyages. Owing to this success and his ability as a botanist in discovering rare species, Bartram became King George III’s botanist in North America in 1765.¹⁹

Had the Brits won the Revolutionary War eleven years later, who knows, Aldo Leopold might have been King George VI’s ecologist in North America. But more on Aldo later. Preceding him in Wisconsin (which achieved statehood in 1848) were a handful of outstanding nineteenth century naturalists; among these was self-taught naturalist Increase Lapham (1811–1875), whose chapter starts off this book and whose dominant interests were archeology, botany, meteorology, and geology.²⁰ New York-born Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864), self-taught as a geologist, mineralogist, zoologist, and botanist, was another.

In 1820, Schoolcraft accompanied an official U.S. expedition searching for the source of the Mississippi. Traveling from Detroit via St. Mary’s River into Lake Superior and along Superior’s southern shore, he served as the expedition’s official geologist and mineralogist, and he also collected many botanical and zoological specimens.²¹ To him we owe the first copious notes on Wisconsin’s avifauna—notes taken during trips down the Namekagon, Flambeau, Mississippi, and Wisconsin rivers, up the Bad and White rivers, across the prairies between Galena and Portage, and along Lake Superior. Two of the more notable species he documented: the Arctic three-toed woodpecker (today known as the black-backed woodpecker Picoides arcticus), a species unknown to renowned ornithologist Alexander Wilson in New York; and the evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus), a species unknown to science at the time.²²

Then there was Ohio-born Dr. Philo Romayne Hoy (1816–1892). He came to Racine in 1846 to open a medical practice and began to collect animal specimens extensively. By 1876, this good friend of Increase Lapham had obtained 318 bird species, eggs of 150 bird species, scores of mammals and reptiles, 1,300 beetles, and 2,000 moths. The Smithsonian Institution’s Spencer Fullerton Baird described Hoy’s collection of local birds as the largest of its kind. Hoy published extensively on several taxa, was the first to investigate the deep-water fauna of Lake Michigan, and documented changes since settlement in the abundance and occurrence of birds around Racine.²³

Wisconsin’s finest oologist was Captain Benjamin Franklin Goss (1823–1893), who first arrived in Milwaukee from New Hampshire in 1841 to pursue a career as a printer. A jack-of-all-trades, Goss farmed near Pewaukee until 1855, served briefly in the Wisconsin Assembly, became a grocer, turned to real estate, enlisted in the army for three years, started a general store, and worked as a postmaster. His serious collecting began in the late 1860s. By the time of his death in 1893 he had collected over 3,000 eggs representing 720 bird species, and he had traveled throughout North America to obtain them. Eggs were not all that he collected. He donated nearly 2,400 butterflies and beetles caught in the U.S. to the Milwaukee Public Museum, along with his enormous egg collection.²⁴

After Increase Lapham, perhaps Wisconsin’s most gifted early-day naturalist was Swedish-born Thure Kumlien (1819–1888). Kumlien attended Upsala Academy where, at age 19, he made a series of watercolors of Swedish birds and mammals. At Upsala University, he studied and became steeped in theology, history, geography, philosophy, mathematics, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and natural history. He soon fled to Wisconsin to escape oppressive parents, who disapproved of his marriage to Christine Wallberg, daughter of a Swedish army officer.²⁵

When he arrived in Milwaukee on August 28, 1843—seven years after Increase Lapham arrived in Milwaukee from Ohio (there is no evidence of any correspondence or interaction between the two naturalists)—the Kumliens, along with a small Swedish party, set off on foot for Lake Koshkonong. This amounted to a 60-mile walk to find land where they could settle. They eventually settled on the northern side of the lake amid open fields and an oak forest, about a quarter-mile from the present-day Dane County line.²⁶

The notion of making a living through farming held little appeal to Thure, and upon his arrival at the lake he began to collect animal specimens with the idea of eventually supporting his family through the sale of various natural history items. (Collecting and cataloging specimens was the norm of the day for an aspiring naturalist.) Thure eventually built a fine collection of bird skins and eggs that gained wide attention. He was also an avid plant collector. Near his home he collected at least 102 plant species that he later donated to the Milwaukee Public Museum.²⁷

Despite lacking authoritative texts on American natural history, Kumlien employed his knowledge of Swedish natural history and eventually developed a comprehensive understanding of southern Wisconsin’s flora and fauna, including a thorough comprehension of phanerogams (spermatophytes), ferns and their allies, mosses, lichens, and fungi. The American botanist Edward Lee Greene, who learned a considerable amount of botany from Kumlien, dedicated a new genus—Kumlienia—in his honor.²⁸

As settlement occurred around him, Kumlien witnessed the destruction of local flora and fauna, something he lamented in a letter to Greene. He noted that a plant-rich tamarack swamp two miles from his home had been drained and converted to a strip featuring market-garden vegetables.²⁹

Kumlien collected in most branches of natural history, including mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and shells, but there was hardly enough business to sustain him, so he taught at the Albion Academy in Albion (eastern Dane County) between 1867 and 1870. Here, he introduced his students to the science of ornithology.³⁰

Hired by the University of Wisconsin and the State Normal Schools to make collections of birds, Thure became in 1881 a taxidermist and conservator for the Wisconsin Natural History Society. In 1883 the Milwaukee Public Museum bought the Society’s collections, and he held the same position with the museum until his death in 1888.³¹

Overseas, Kumlien gained a reputation as the state’s finest collector at a time when one’s skill as a collector was equated with one’s capability as a naturalist. He was not as revered at home. Local residents thought he was a little odd for venturing out at night with a lantern to capture and collect invertebrates in the fields around his home. But his collections were substantial. He once made a trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum carrying 600 specimens of plants and invertebrates, as well as many birds.³²

More than any other pioneer naturalist, Kumlien increased our knowledge of Wisconsin’s avifauna. Although he did not obtain his first book on American ornithology until 1848, by 1850 he had documented the occurrence of at least 115 bird species in the southern part of the state. More interested in sharing his observations than in publishing papers on his findings, Thure had, in the words of ornithologist A.W. Schorger an intense and childlike love of natural objects that contributed to his ability as a singularly accurate observer.³³

One of Thure’s five sons, Aaron Ludwig Kumlien (1853–1902), was a fine naturalist in his own right, capable of producing beautiful drawings and watercolors of birds, butterflies, fish, and mammals. He taught at Milton College in the 1890s and gained a reputation as an excellent field naturalist who directed and guided his students in the study of nature. Ludwig is perhaps best remembered for his collaboration with naturalist Ned Hollister on the seminal book Birds of Wisconsin, published in 1903. It’s a work that summarized nearly 60 years of ornithological records collected largely by the Kumlien family. The authors described over 357 bird species and subspecies.³⁴

ALDO LEOPOLD,

³⁵ born January 11, 1887, grew up along the banks of the Mississippi in Burlington, Iowa, the son of a furniture manufacturer of German descent. After graduating from the Yale School of Forestry in 1909 and working for the United States Forest Service in Arizona, he accepted a position in 1924 in Madison, Wisconsin, as associate director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. He came to Madison with the understanding that he would soon become director, but it was not to be, and for the next four years he became mired in administration and paperwork. He quit in 1928 and went into private practice as a consulting forester. He also performed game surveys and assisted universities in developing wildlife management programs.

Aldo used his time away from government bureaucracy to write the classic Game Management, based on lessons learned over 15 years in the Southwest and Midwest. The same year it was published, 1933, he joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fill the chair of game management, created especially for him. Two years later, he bought an abandoned farm on 80 acres of overworked land adjacent to the Wisconsin River. Here with his family he fixed up an abandoned chicken coop—the shack—and conducted ecological experiments to restore native vegetation and wildlife.

The refinement of years of natural history observation and interpretation, together with personal reflections, led to the writing of the renowned A Sand County Almanac,³⁶ which was repeatedly rejected by publishers over a period of seven years before the Oxford University Press called on April 14, 1948, to notify him of its acceptance. A week later, Aldo died fighting a neighbor’s brush fire. As he realized his heart was failing and death was near, he lay down in a grassy area, folded his hands together across his chest, and passed away, with the fire, which had become light, quickly brushing over his body.³⁷

Today, there is no question that Leopold is the most well-known and revered Wisconsin naturalist among the pantheon of American naturalists. More importantly, his work very much represents the broad community of Wisconsin conservation and natural history figures, including those represented in this volume. It is his legacy of keen natural history study combined with a focus on ecological restoration and a consummate ability to communicate widely what he learned and interpreted that is honored through the stories and lives of the 19 naturalists presented in this book. Collectively, their stories serve to empower the Leopold legacy and present a cogent argument for working together to make sure that the conservation of biodiversity

*A final note: scientific names of plants and animals in this volume are used sparingly, with some exceptions, to make the book more accessible (readable) to the general reader. And since scientific nomenclature is likely to change regularly, instead of an appendix listing the common and scientific names of every plant and animal discussed, I instead have listed in the book’s only Appendix, the on-line taxonomic sources for the organisms mentioned. The reader is referred to this Appendix to check an on-line source for the most current common and scientific names of species.

Increase Lapham

(1811-1875)

Increase Lapham. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-2758

Chapter One~

Increase Lapham

It is with a great deal of regret that I inform you that I cannot spend this day of rest with you at home, in peace and quiet, instead of in the woods ten miles from any place.

—Letter to wife, Ann Marie Lapham, Sunday, 21 April 1839

Apart from Native Americans, who were the first to know Wisconsin’s natural history, there was one who many argue was Wisconsin’s premier naturalist—Increase Allen Lapham—the first to promote the state’s natural history well beyond the state’s borders. Wiry, quiet and unassuming, this self-trained scholar possessed an inexhaustible passion to understand and catalog the natural world.

Today, Increase Lapham is widely recognized as Wisconsin’s most accomplished pioneering naturalist, working at a time preceding and following statehood, and initiating investigations into the state’s botany, geology, topography, geography, ichthyology, meteorology, history, forestry, and archeology. The Smithsonian Institution published his work on effigy mounds in 1855—the highly acclaimed The Antiquities of Wisconsin.³⁸

Wisconsinites had never seen anything quite like him, and Increase Lapham left an indelible impression on those who encountered him.

One day, while travelling in an open wagon with a group of reporters to inspect the planned route of a southeastern Wisconsin railway line, he asked the driver to stop and stop again so that he could walk into a field to pick a flower or another plant, or collect a stone. One reporter described Lapham’s effect this way: No sooner had we fairly started, than little was his mind occupied with the question of the railway…. If he secured something rare and new, his face and manner seemed to express the joy of a child in chasing a butterfly. And so we traveled for 30 or 40 miles. The journey was slow, but interesting, and the more we saw of his guileless and child-like life, the more profound was our admiration for the character of the man who seemed to rise above the dross of this world, and soar constantly in the realms of Science.³⁹

His seminal work on Wisconsin’s forests—Report of the disastrous effects of the destruction of forest trees, now going on so rapidly in the State of Wisconsin⁴⁰—warned of the dangers of resource over-exploitation, and he became known as a father of forest conservation for his advocacy of scientific management. Of equal importance was his concern for the effects of weather on farmers and the Great Lakes shipping trade. He became immersed in the study of weather, and in 1870 helped establish a national storm warning system, which was to evolve into the National Weather Service.

Born March 7, 1811, in Palmyra, New York, to Quaker parents and the fifth of 13 children, Increase (named after Increase Allen, his grandfather on his mother’s side) originally came to Wisconsin at age 25 as a self-trained Ohio canal engineer. He was invited by a fellow Ohio canal worker, Byron Kilbourn, to join an engineering crew to help build a canal from Milwaukee west into Wisconsin’s lead region. Increase learned canal work under his father, Seneca, a contractor on the Erie Canal, and from his brother Darius, an assistant engineer. The Milwaukee-Rock River canal never materialized when railroad transportation took root, but Lapham chose to remain in Milwaukee with his new bride, Ann Marie Alcott.

For the next nearly 40 years, as Milwaukee grew from a frontier village to a prosperous city, Increase went to great lengths to explore the countryside and document the area’s natural history, publishing as early as 1836 the Wisconsin Territory’s first scientific treatise, A Catalogue of Plants and Shells Found in the Vicinity of Milwaukee.⁴¹ Eight years later, he finished Milwaukee’s first commercially published book, A Geographical and Topographical Description of Wisconsin, which informed new immigrants eager to learn more about their chosen area of settlement. A second edition⁴² in 1846 included his first published detailed map of the Wisconsin Territory.

In an unpublished autobiography,⁴³ Increase told how he first became intrigued by the natural world in Lockport, New York, where his father was working on the locks for the Erie Canal. I earned some money by cutting stone to be used in the locks. Soon after this, I was employed in the engineer service … in the capacity of rodman for my brother Darius Lapham who had already [achieved] the position of assistant engineer. The beautiful mineral specimens I found in the deep cut rock at Lockport gave me my first ideas of mineralogy and initiated a habit of observation that has continued through all my life. I found amusement and pastime in the study of nature, leading to long walks in the country, and as I found no others of similar tastes, these rambles were usually without companions.

Learning through his habit of observation proved rewarding: The satisfaction of being able to learn some new thing is a sufficient return for the extra effort. Knowledge is power, says the proverb. It is at any rate a pleasure.

Though self-deprecating to a fault, Increase’s observation acumen led to his becoming an accomplished botanist. He estimated his botanical collection of specimens to be about 8,000 species at its peak, and he donated more than 1,000 plant specimens to the newly established University of Wisconsin Botany Department. He also filled requests for specimens from botanists overseas and from nationally known scientists, such as Harvard University botanist Asa Gray and naturalist Louis Agassiz.

Increase Lapham’s handwritten title page for A Geographical and Topographical Description of Wisconsin. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-101706.

Increase was also very involved with community and regional affairs, lecturing about science to high school students meeting at the Unitarian Church and to fellow members of the Milwaukee Lyceum, of which he was a founder. He served as the first secretary of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters and helped found the groundbreaking Milwaukee Female College and what is today the Wisconsin Historical Society, where he served as president for 10 years.

Title page of Increase Lapham’s A Catalogue of Plants Found in the Vicinity of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Territory. Wisconsin Historical Society WHS-102043.

Lapham’s noteworthy contributions are presented in elegant detail in the Lapham biography Studying Wisconsin by Martha Bergland and Paul G. Hayes (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014), but it is his impressions of Wisconsin’s landscapes, as well as his thoughts and feelings on early Wisconsin life that intrigue me most. These are typically conveyed through family letters, personal journals, and public writings—all wonderfully accessible through the Wisconsin Historical Society.

In the pages that follow, I attempt to shed light on these subjects, largely through correspondence Increase had with his older brother Darius with whom Increase held a special bond and exhibited a sharp but playful sense of humor, and with wife Ann Marie, to whom he turned more and more after Darius’ death by cholera in 1850 at age 42; he was only three years older than Increase. It should be noted here that Increase’s daughter, Julia, painstakingly edited and typed hundreds of pages of his correspondence, again, all housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society. These are the source for much of the material that follows.

I start, however, with the reflections of naturalist and friend Philo R. Hoy, who knew him for nearly 30 years, and who paid tribute to him in the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, after Lapham’s death on September 14, 1875. His piece was titled, Increase A. Lapham, LLD.⁴⁴

"My first acquaintance with Dr. Lapham was in 1846, when one morning there landed from the steamer Sultana a small man with a huge collecting box hanging at his side.

"He came from Milwaukee and intended returning on foot along the lakeshore in order to collect plants and shells, no easy journey, encumbered, as he soon would be, with a well filled specimen box. He spoke lightly of the undertaking, saying he had performed similar feats before…. In after years we were often together, studying the mounds, quarries, forest trees, etc., near Racine, and my first impressions of his energy, perseverance, enthusiasm, accuracy, and extent of information were all deepened by our subsequent meetings.

"He was a quiet, unassuming gentleman, benevolent, and most hospitable, as both strangers and friends can abundantly testify. He had not the advantages of commanding presence, and was not gifted in public speaking, and being modest to a fault, always inclined to underrate his own abilities and labors. He often did not receive that recognition which his knowledge demanded … [but] he soon became the authority on all scientific subjects and was often appealed to from city, state, and country for information which he alone could furnish….

"No one could doubt his industry who saw his large, valuable, and well used library, and his extensive and systematically arranged collection of minerals, fossils, shells and antiquities; or who examined his Herbarium of three thousand specimens—the finest in the Northwest—and then remembered in connection with all that his work in other directions. His idea of rest was characteristically shown by his once cataloguing my hundreds of insects for future use in some publication, at a time when he visited me under his physicians’ orders to take a needed rest and abstain from business.

"Lapham never had the advantages of a college education. But was not the book of nature ever open to impart instruction to this student who knew how to read its pages with delight and profit?…

To know Dr. Lapham, we must go with him to his workshop—the great out-doors. We stroll out on the prairies. He pulls up the grass and discourses familiarly of the spikes and spikelets, the rachis and glume, inspects the roots, digs down and examines the soil from which they spring. His tongue is unloosed, and he becomes eloquent in spite of himself. We go into the forest. He talks of the various species of trees, the vines that clamber up their trunks and nestle in their branches. He inspects the lichens that grow on the rough bark, examines the moss that adheres to the roots, and unearths a tiny helix that has found a home there. We go to the rapids, and he immediately interests himself in the rare ferns that festoon the rocks with their graceful fronds or clambers among the quarries, marks the stratification of the Silurian rocks, and chips out rare forms of Crinoids and Trilobites—those wonderful representations of the ocean fauna of the dim past…. He talks of the force of the winds and their velocity and direction and then looks up [at] the clouds and tells their indication, and speaks of the annual rainfall and of the average temperature of the seasons for the last thirty years, during which time he had kept a faithful record of these phenomena….

Drawing by Increase Lapham of sedges in the family Cyperaceae. Members of the genus Carex may be called true sedges, the species-rich genus in the family. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-83780.

In the following correspondence between Increase and his family, Dear Brother or My dear brother refers to older brother Darius, unless otherwise noted.

Milwaukee, July 7th, 1836

Dear Brother:

Since I left you at Reading [Ohio] I have passed over 1,200 miles! Milwaukee contains about fifty houses, mostly on the east side of the river; it is supposed to contain (with the suburbs) about 1,000 inhabitants! Town lots are worth $500 to $5,500. Lumber is from $30 to $50 per thousand feet. Flour $8.25 per barrel and everything else about the same proportion. Labor is $1.25 per day and boarding, which equals $2.00 per day. The mail arrives and departs once a week and has just brought papers that I saw at Detroit…. I find Milwaukee just about what I expected and have therefore no cause of disappointment or complaint. I suppose I can enjoy myself as well here as among the musketos [sic] on the extension of the Miami canal.

Your affectionate brother,

I.A. Lapham

Milwaukee, July 27th, 1836

Dear Father:

Milwaukee is the site of an Indian town and the remains of their wigwams are still to be seen. The ground is covered with small mounds, resembling large potato hills, on top of which they have planted from year to year their scanty crop of corn. The Indians found about here belong principally to the tribe called Menominee (in English wild rice eaters).

I shall start in a few days on a geological excursion with Mr. Kilbourn [in whose house Lapham was boarding]. If we do not find gold mines we may find something else equally valuable.

Your dutiful son,

Increase

Milwaukee, Oct. 1st, 1836

Dear Father:

Your letter of July 4th came to hand towards the last of the month and on the very day that I mailed for you my first from this place….

I have already made several jaunts through the country. 1st, to Root river, 25 miles on foot and alone through the woods, 17 miles of it without any house! Saw no Indians but if I had, I should have felt much more safe than if I had met a gang of white men! They are decidedly the most to be dreaded! 2nd, to the Menononee [sic] Falls on horseback with an experienced backwoodsman. Encamped at night on the bank of the river at the falls. This was my first essay in camp duty. Cooked my dinner by hanging a piece of meat on a sharp stick and fastening the end of the stick in the ground before the fire. Slept on the ground under a small cloth tent which we brought on one of our horses. 3rd, went to Chicago; travelled along the Des Plaines river where I saw some of the finest lands that I ever did see.

The river runs through heavily timbered land bordered on both sides by broad, rolling prairies. Chicago is a low, level muddy place.

I have not heard from Darius since I left his house in June, is he still alive? Pazzi [another Lapham brother] says that Darius has a Rachel in his family now, is this his mother?

Don’t forget to write me every month.

I remain your dutiful son,

Increase

Reading, Hamilton Co., Ohio

Oct. 30th, 1836

Dear Brother Increase:

You have gone so far to the ‘far west’ and joined yourself to that outlandish conglomeration of folks called land speculators of whom the president has as poor an opinion as I have, that I have been at a loss how to concoct a letter to suit you under the circumstances. By [Ohio businessman] Micajah [T. Williams] I sent you word that we were alive and kicking and by him I received the same important intelligence from you.

Micajah says that you must let yarbs [herbs] and Mussells alone and go to making yourself rich. Sam’l Forrer says he is afraid you will forget to get rich in your zeal for shellology. Micajah says he introduced you to Gov. Dodge and told him that his government was commenced under most favorable circumstances for internal improvements having two first rate civil engineers in the territory and that you were one of them!…

I remain yours forever,

Darius

Darius and Phebe (daughter) Lapham. Ohio History Connection.

Milwaukee, W[isconsin] T[erritory]

Dec. 3rd, 1836

Dear Brother:

After waiting until I had lost all patience and had fairly come to the conclusion that you had determined not to write me again, I received your letter of Oct. 30th. Have you received six letters that I have sent you since I left home?

I regret very much that you do not answer my letters, for I want to give you an account of my numerous jaunts into the country in this vicinity; the woodlands, the prairies, the beautiful lakes surrounded by regular hills and filled with beautiful islands; our rivers and cascades, the rocks, stones and yarbs; the ancient mounds made to represent turtles, lions (?), bears and other animals, our native copper, our lead ore and our tremendous agricultural productions. I want you to know how I spend my time, what I am doing, how many canals, railroads and turnpikes I have located and a long list of other things which you formerly (or at least I supposed so) took some interest in knowing….

Your affectionate brother,

Increase

This detailed map outlines mid and southern WI county boundaries, and city/town lines are provided. Other marks include lead mines, copper mines, streams, plank roads, Lake Michigan elevation, Green Bay water depth, and the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroads. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-92362.

Milwaukee, W.T., Feb. 25, 1837

Dear Brother:

I have received your letter in which you say that you would read with interest an account of matters and things in general relation to this country. Our town has grown more rapidly than any other town in the United States, and would have grown much faster if we could have procured building material.

In October, 1835, the first lots were sold. There were then only three cabins in town, and not more than half a dozen persons. In one year from that time two hundred buildings were erected, and we have a population of twelve hundred souls. About $30,000 have been expended in grading streets and making other public improvements.

The society here is good, the people are principally from New York and the states east of it; many are from the Canadas. They all possess the enterprising go-a-head spirit of the New Englanders.

The country has not kept pace with the town in its onward march, for the land belongs to the government and cannot be purchased until the president of the U.S. sees fit to bring it into market. However, many people have taken possession of these lands with the intention of purchasing whenever they are brought into market, and in this way we have many fine farms. Merchandise of all kinds is sold here as cheap as at Columbus, O., and you will readily see why this is so when you remember that from Buffalo they are shipped directly to Milwaukee. There is no transfer from schooners to canal boats and no canal tolls to pay. Provisions, on the other hand, are about one hundred percent higher here than in Ohio on account of having to be transported from a distance. This, of course, makes farming a very profitable business.

Our town is very beautifully situated on a plain elevated from five to thirty feet above the lake and enclosed by hills about one hundred feet high. On the slope and projecting swells of these hills are some grand sites for residences commanding a view of the lake and the town. One of the best and most picturesque of these I have selected for myself. This plain is divided into several parts by the Milwaukee and Menomonee [sic] rivers and the Kinnikinnick Creek. The Milwaukee is navigable for the largest vessels on the lakes for